how come most japanese websites and such have kanji, kana, and hiragana all in even the same word?! i know hiragana but find it difficult to read anything! at least an explanation to why it is like this would be nice plz

hamsterfreak4evr wrote:will i have to learn kana and kanji just to read a simple sentence?

Yes.

Reading japanese means knowing kanji. Without kanji, you can still hope for speaking/listening, but reading is far out the window.

Even kindergarten stories use a very bare minimum amount of kanji.

Kanji are what help parse a sentence. They make up the bulk of words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Kana is frequently used for the conjugations, so you will almost always find kana trailing kanji, and yes, it's all one word.

It's not as haphazard as it looks to you right now. But you're not going to be able to read any manga or japanese websites without a grasp on the 1945 joyo kanji (although, even that's not all of them).

No one can help you with the attitude you approach learning the language with. You can choose to continue to flail around helplessly as if you're drowning... or you can realize the water's only ankle deep, so stand up and do something about it.

Well, it's KATAKANA, HIRAGANA, and KANJI. The three writing systems of Japanese.

Katakana is NOT Kana. Kana is another word for "japanese characters altogether".

It looks bad all with hiragana and/or katakana, and it's impossible to understand.

Don't cry about kanji because you will get sacked and yelled at. It's not that bad. Don't learn everything at once, that can probably be why you forget stuff.

Learn Hiragana, Katakana, and then vocabulary, but as you learn vocabulary, study the kanji for the words and work on the Kanji grades 1-6. Those are easy to find with Google.

~Outie.

[edit: hiragana: japanese words, katakana: borrowed words and foreign names/words, Kanji: sets words apart from others and makes it easier to understand, originally from Chinese, but does not mean the same thing as Chinese characters.]

Last edited by ParanoiaK3 on Mon 11.28.2005 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, it's KATAKANA, HIRAGANA, and KANJI. The three writing systems of Japanese.

Katakana is NOT Kana. Kana is another word for "japanese characters altogether".

Sorry, You are incorrect.

Kana 仮名 is subdivided into hiragana 平仮名 and katakana片仮名. Thats why both end in "kana." Because they are types of kana. Moji 文字 can be subdivided into kana 仮名, kanji 漢字, roumaji ローマ字...or any other type of character. If you want to specify only Japanese characters (katakana, hiragana, kanji) you could say nihongomoji 日本語文字.

If you want to adopt that attitude try to justify it better.

Last edited by Infidel on Mon 11.28.2005 6:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

I believe the question has already been answered several times to varying degree.

There are many people who can not fully answer a question or can not answer it as clearly as the person asking the question might like. How does that make them "elitist"?

"Japan stole the chinese characters"...did they break into china in the middle of the night and whisk the characters away at gunpoint?

Wouldn't that make English the third or fourth (or even more) generation in-bred bastard child of stolen charcters (and words)!?

I'm glad you wanted to help answer the question, that had already been answered. But bashing everyone here and making claims about a culture "stealing" things from other cultures....won't win you any support or friends.

And one last thing. I was wondering why you feel the need to put ------- substitutes for foul language, why not just eliminate those all together you ------- ------- ------ ------? I don't think they're needed at all.

Good luck and good bye.

Last edited by kempokatt on Mon 11.28.2005 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Part of the problem is Homophones. In English, homophones are usually different parts of speach. Like park (the place) and park (the action) In Japanese many homophones are the same part of speach so context isn't always enough. That's why kanji are so important. Though English does have a few that are the same type of speach. Like cleave. Cleave the verb to separate or cleave the verb to hold together. That is why the word almost always has a supplement to clarify.

They also make it easier to read, sentences more compact, and faster to read. But it does take longer to write. Oh well, can't have everything.